February 06, 2008

DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet.

Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.

Even so, the research published in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry
B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between sequences of
several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence
of proteins. Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules
from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help
from any other molecules or chemical signals.

In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged
DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other
material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with
identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather
together as DNA strands with different sequences. No one knows how
individual DNA strands could possibly be communicating in this way, yet
somehow they do. The “telepathic” effect is a source of wonder and
amazement for scientists.

“Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can
reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces
of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey
Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues.

This recognition effect may help increase the accuracy and efficiency
of the homologous recombination of genes, which is a process
responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new
findings may also shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors,
which are factors in cancer, aging, and other health issues.

Comments

I guess it's just what we suspected all the time -- God holds it all together for us:

"Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:15-17

Did you know that there are forces in nature that science can’t explain? Forces such as gravity, centrifugal force, and others. Scientists can study them; they can analyze them; they can even measure them, but they don’t know why they are there.
One of the physicists who developed the Big Bang Theory puzzled over how we could live in a world in which practically every object was a potential nuclear explosion, and yet not be blown to bits. Carl Darrow, a physicist at Bell Laboratories, wrote that these particles have no right to be alive at all-they never should have been created and, if created, they should have blown up instantly. Yet there is something that relentlessly holds them together.
What is this force that keeps the universe intact? Where does the power come from to keep us from instantly dissolving into one massive nuclear explosion? The answer is found in Colossians 1:17, "[Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Not only did He create all things (v. 16), but by His hand, we are held together. Jesus Christ is the power behind every mysterious force in the universe.
Someday at the time of His Father’s choosing and as 2 Peter 3:10-12 teaches, Jesus will withdraw His sustaining influence and there will be a blowout such as none of us has ever imagined.
Then, after our old universe has passed away, He will create a new heaven and a new earth, where we will live with Him forever (v. 13).
By just a word of His power (Hebrews 1:3), Jesus holds all things together. He is the relentless force in the universe, and although unbelieving men and women turn away from Him, we worship Him as the central figure in all time and space. He is supreme; He is eternal; He is the Sustainer of all things.
What burden can He not carry for you?" Thank you Obad yahu

I guess it's just what we suspected all the time -- God holds it all together for us:

"Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:15-17

Did you know that there are forces in nature that science can’t explain? Forces such as gravity, centrifugal force, and others. Scientists can study them; they can analyze them; they can even measure them, but they don’t know why they are there.
One of the physicists who developed the Big Bang Theory puzzled over how we could live in a world in which practically every object was a potential nuclear explosion, and yet not be blown to bits. Carl Darrow, a physicist at Bell Laboratories, wrote that these particles have no right to be alive at all-they never should have been created and, if created, they should have blown up instantly. Yet there is something that relentlessly holds them together.
What is this force that keeps the universe intact? Where does the power come from to keep us from instantly dissolving into one massive nuclear explosion? The answer is found in Colossians 1:17, "[Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Not only did He create all things (v. 16), but by His hand, we are held together. Jesus Christ is the power behind every mysterious force in the universe.
Someday at the time of His Father’s choosing and as 2 Peter 3:10-12 teaches, Jesus will withdraw His sustaining influence and there will be a blowout such as none of us has ever imagined.
Then, after our old universe has passed away, He will create a new heaven and a new earth, where we will live with Him forever (v. 13).
By just a word of His power (Hebrews 1:3), Jesus holds all things together. He is the relentless force in the universe, and although unbelieving men and women turn away from Him, we worship Him as the central figure in all time and space. He is supreme; He is eternal; He is the Sustainer of all things.
What burden can He not carry for you?" Thank you Obad yahu

You guys are fools. If you had done more than read (and lifted text from) the Eurekalert on this, you would have noticed that the researchers posited a mechanism. In fact, in the abstract, they mention that the finding is "consistent with our earlier theoretical hypothesis".

are you an idiot? when the nucleotides pair they have to fit together in a way that results in the least strain on the molecule (think about it like K'Nex). If the bases don't pair properly there will be too much strain on the molecule and the hydrogen bonds will be overwhelmed by the strain.

This experiment was designed to test the authors' hypothesis that, "long pieces of identical double-stranded DNA could identify each other merely as a result of complementary patterns of electrical charges which they both carry."

I'm not really the brainy genetic chemistry type, but Copperville's comment made me smile.
Yes let us be quick to make the leap of faith to the most appeasing conclusion and be blind to other alternative possibilities as of why it could be so.

Wow. Cooperville.
When science fails to have an answer, you need to have faith...
Faith in science. That science doesn't have the answer yet, but faith that the answer is nearby and that we'll find it. But saying it was Gods act is to accept things without question. God would want you to be in pursuit of truth, not foolishly accept everything. Why do you study so many pages of the Bible ? Is it not to learn more ?
Same way once you say - gravity exists just because, then you failed. You gave up.
Same way as you find a bible lying around and say - ok, bible is here. You fail unless you pick it up and read/study it. Same for science - you find gravity, you study it.
My analogy may be bad but thats the language you understand.
Just because you don't know it doesn't mean someone magically put it there.

This is performed by tesla circuits. the electromagetic fields of DNA are very sensitive and attract to one another along large and complex routes of evolutionary species tesla /wireless circuits. These circuits can have millions of amperes of energy collected amongst them in the fields, and the organization of these nucleotides produces a feedback loop within the tesla field matrix to make them cling.

Hey, lay off the guy. As long as we're anthropomorphizing, wouldn't Science want you to be level-headed and logical? Stay away from the ad hominem attacks, unless you want to sound arrogant. Do you think you're somehow better because you don't believe in God? If you really think you're superior, why don't you act in a superior way?

Actually, em fields form helixes and double helixes in plasma in space.

'God' is a living electromagnetic field specie with special interactive wireless circuitry.

I speculate that it acquires recharging field condensations from human interactive and personal events. Every thought you have is an electrical circuit made of neurons, and its magnetic field extends subtle force infinitely.

God or the yhwh-field probably did design humanity and earth and the angels as a food/field generator for whatever purposes it has.

and have a nice day. I'm technically an enlightened Christian and I believe in the virgin birth, the resurrection, miracles, which I can describe with accurate and often amazing science, creation, the flood, the tower of babel, nephilim, angels, and most other Bible stories, as well as Revelations, which we are experiencing.

Now that I have seen the actual paper in JPC B, I can safely say that the article written above is one of the worst pieces of amateur, sensationalist crappy attempts at science reporting in a while. Telepathic molecules, I mean come on!

It is nothing but intellectual inertia to open the bottomless box of God to put in everything that is inexplicable in a given time. Somebody fervently argued with the famous Indian philosopher, J Krishnamurti that we were created by God. Krishnamurti replied: I am not sure. What seems to be true is that God is our creation. If we were created by God, we would have been quite different!

It all started with a blob of dust. Then magic happened and god is just doing this to confuse you. You will never understand the universe, because god doesn't want you to. You arrogant scientists, you should just quit because its such a waste of time even trying to understand the universe. Everyone knows god invented dinosaurs just to annoy scientists who don't believe.

Our universe is a simulation. Our Creator Jesus Christ created the universe with his voice (Word). His voice is the atomic glue to keeps all quarks, atoms and etc together.

Our world is very fragile. A small imbalance in the ecosystem can destroy the whole ecosystem. Our body have so many needs and are so fragile, a small chemical imbalance in our body and we die. How did the "one cell" in the beginning of evolution survived in extreme hash environment and reproduced? I like to see evolution worshipers thrown naked and alone into a desert with no living organisms and see how they would survive and reproduce. I bet they can't last more than 1 month and most would die in 1 week.

You don't believe in God because he is the Light and you would not want to step into the light. You love to do evil in darkness thinking that no one will find out. Jesus sees ALL deeds and He will judge you according to your evil deeds. He has paid for your penalty of death with His Blood on the cross if you just accepted it.

Sigh..it just makes me so sad to think how weak-minded people who don't believe we came from a non-causal source with no intent or reason or fundamentals or absolutes and it was only all an accident with only the 'illusion' of complex patterns of design, forethought and reason that beckons us to look deeper to the underpinnings of reality and thereby understand the handiwork of a master engineer and creator of all things visible and invisible and appreciate such an authority and mastery over the universe and all that in it is.

But no! stop! there's nothing to find as it's all an accident and our brains only came from accidents so reasoning can't really exist (it presumes a 'reason'), it's only the illusion of reason, which cancels out my entire argument because it attempts to convince you using reason which again doesn't exist.. which is also making an absolute statement, but we KNOW there are no absolutes, even though that in itself is an absolute statement and thereby cancels itself out too, but nevermind that, it sounds too reasonable.

Mental prisoners to some pie in the sky space daddy, like those named above, are stiffling human progress and our quest for enlightenment so that we may all evolve into gods and all be superior at the same time together to each other!

And for that, we need more DEATH in the world! Kill the weak and backwards! YES! Let us adore our great med-school dropout and forefather in thought and remember his wise words:

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows"
- Charles Darwin in "On the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life."

Through death we will achieve godhood! See? the bloody modern dictatos weren't so bad afterall, once you discard reason from reality. Marx, Engels, Nietzsche, etc. now THOSE people are the real enlightened ones, not those foolish flying spaghetti monster worshippers (LoL!!) I listed earlier.

Can't people just evolve a brain big and beautiful like mine??

Oh SSSSIIIGGGGGHHHHHHHH...

..."it remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof." - Kant

"Cooperville you are exactly what is wrong with this country…dogma and superstition over reason and science."

There is a difference between dogma + superstition and faith. What do you need to believe in God? Faith. What do you need to believe that we evolved from apes, when no one was there to witness it? Faith. To say that Cooperville was spouting dogma and superstition is to insult yourself, and all evolutionists.

If you look for it, there's massive problems with the ape-to-man theory. So why don't you look?

I believe that science should be investigated to it's full extent because God created such an intriguing universe. I DO have a problem when people look at something in nature and don't investigate- that's called ignorance of this wonderful creation.

everyone is so hung up on their own (pre)conceptions that what they believe is right, religious or scientific. i would consider myself more of a scientist as i lean towards the idea that organized religion has always evolved as a population control mechanism. and i dont really buy the idea of an old guy/single being (or whatever), sitting around in heaven. although people should check out the idea of the revised theory of everything where there is a conscious energy grid(i really dont want to go technical because it will take me hours to explain what i am talking about those of you interested either already know or can find out for yourselves) that is connected to absolutely everthing and connects everything with everything else. (although when i say conscious i hope you dont think i mean actually aware in any sense of the words)

however none of you 'scientists' seem to realise that most of what modern science is based on (newton/einstein), i just bring those two as classic examples, has to be completely wrong for many recent theories and discoveries in science(blacklight power/quantum mechanics i mean the really advanced stuff) to even work. and bearing in mind 90% of both their lifetimes studies was completely wrong, we only use their work because its easier to teach kids the lie thats simple than it is to teach them the truth that 90% of people can't even comprehend! and in 100 years time it is highly likely our theories and ideas will be just as ludicrous as we now think alchemy, etc is today. lets face it at the end of the day most science is as much blind faith as religion. if a theory fits we'll say its true, and ignore the anomalies, how is that any different from coming up with the theory that god created everything and now controls it?

The first thing I thought of as I read this article was, "Great, the fundies are going to jump all over this as some kind of evidence for God." Then I read the very first comment, and lo and behold...

Anyway, I'll just point out something in response to alehandro. The fact that early scientists were Christians is about as meaningful as the fact that about 90% of US prison inmates are Christian, or the fact that slave traders and conquistadors used the Bible to justify their actions. In other words, not very.

In previous centuries, essentially everybody in the West who wasn't a Jew was considered Christian. Everybody from the Middle East was labeled "Mohammedan" (Muslim), and the Chinese were generally assumed to be "Confucian". If you didn't actually believe in God, you probably didn't advertise it unless you specifically wanted to make an issue of it, like Bertrand Russel or Nietzsche. If it didn't really concern you, you probably just considered yourself Christian by default. Kind of like a lot of people today, come to think of it.

You know what, you can believe in God and science. When he turned 50, Einstein (who was arguably the greatest scientific mind in the history of the planet) granted an interview in which he was asked point-blank, whether he believed in God.

"I am not an atheist," he began. "The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws."

I'm with Einstein on this one. People who don't want to understand the laws of the universe under the pretense of "religion" are being small-mined. People who don't want to consider the very real possibility that the unfathomable alignment that somehow allowed life on Earth perhaps was not an accident, and refuse to consider this under the pretense of "Science" are also being small minded. A higher power/intelligence could very well fit into "Science" in ways that we don't yet understand. There is an incredible order to certain laws in the Universe that we aren't even close to understanding. It's arrogant and silly either way, when people think they have all the answers. We don't even know what 96% of the material in the universe is made of. Lets not call each other names and make petty judgments because we somehow think we "know better" than others. Einstein couldn't figure out the existence or Nature of God, and I somehow doubt that any of us posting have either.

Whenever there is an article of scientific nature there always seems to be people that, for some reason, feel compelled to toss out some stupid religious explanation. Then the non-religious people put in their two cents and we have endless bickering. This article spoke of a controlled expirment with intriguing results and their potential implications. Nothing more.. If you people want entertain unknown masses with senseless ramblings, how about posting a blog elsewhere or perhaps a link to an autobiography. As amusing as Cooperville's comments were, they have no place here other than to incite negative action.

Cooperville is right. There are very plain scientific explanations. See for yourself:

"We hypothesize that the origin of this recognition may be as follows: In-register alignment of phosphate strands with grooves on opposing DNA minimizes unfavorable electrostatic interactions between the negatively charged phosphates and maximizes favorable interactions of phosphates with bound counterions."

The authors provided several further hypotheses, as well. Of which, DNA "telepathy" was not one.

It always pays to actually READ the paper. Thank goodness the body of scientific knowledge consists NOT ONLY of mass consumption ePUB articles. We'd all be making cold fusion machines in our basements.

i am a atheist, and we have only been around for the last millisecond on the earths "24hr clock". And why dont other species of animals have gods? my cat doesnt give a **** about god or whoever, just when his next food is coming! just as much as a ant crawling across my path or any other creature (oh, except for the PRAYING MANTIS you'll probably say!). if there was/is a god, he has some serious issues, war hate suffering all go hand in hand with ANY religion. Religion is for the weak, remember, survival of the fittest, darwin couldnt have put it better....

I agree with AnotherAnonymousName this isn't an article about religion or atheism, it's an article about some intriguing new findings that have yet to be explained. The “telepathic” bit was in parenthesis for a reason-it's just being used as a descriptive term until the real mechanism is identified. Whether you're personally religious or atheist is completely irrelevant!

When did Jesus Christ become G*D? Wow! now that is a discovery...
Maybe you all were not paying attention in Sunday school- only G*D is G*D...Jesus is supposed to be a savior but NOT G*D...Anyway wake up because Jesus is a myth and identical to Horus...

This reminds me of a theory in a book I read called "The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the origins of knowledge" by Jeremy Narby.

He proposed that the 'junk DNA' that makes up 80-90% of the genome was not "junk" at all and was actually used to communicate with other DNA via vibration.

He noted that the chemical structure of the junk DNA was quite similar to quartz and gave of similar frequency vibrations.

Sounds very similar to me.

I still take this with a grain of salt as the author also took hallucinogenic drugs (DMT) and likened DNA to the aboriginal myth of the rainbow serpent. But who knows... Frances Crick the father of modern genetics admitted to being on LSD when he discovered the double helix structure of DNA?

I don't know what you're trying communicate in saying "Jesus is a myth". If you're denying that he existed on Earth, I can say flat out that you're a fool. 20,000 copies of the bible exist (still intact) from during his life to 20 years after his crucifixion. Stone carvings have been found with record of his crucifixion from the Roman government.

If you're just denying that he was God in human form, well, there's 20,000 copies of the bible for you to look at.

I would like to see both of you people shut the hell up. Both sides of your heaven versus science debate are annoying and have nothing to do with anything.
As though evolution didn't have some amazing ability to seemingly self replicate itself. And as though God didn't have some guiding hand in which strands of dna exploded, or grouped together. It makes no difference. People who follow religion say God is science and people who follow science say science is God. It makes no damn difference.

For those who commented that this is just hydrogen bonding, why don't you try reading the paper again. They clearly state that they don't know for sure what causes this reaction, and it is contrary to known laws of physics. Now, of course it isn't contrary to laws of physics, its just contrary to the ones we know about at this point.

Does that mean God or magic did it? That's not the point! The point is that there are still a lot of things we don't know about our incredible universe on both a micro and a macro scale. Until we find the mechanism, everything seems like magic, but finding the mechanism makes it no less amazing or beautiful how everything fits together.

If you, as a reasonable human being, take a moment to actually rescearch and critique my faith, (christianity), being of honest and open mind, I do believe you can reasonably deduct that the God of the bible is alive and well, and ready to love you. I think i may understand what the first commenter may have ment, in the sense that if a man makes an alarm clock, he doesnt constantly have to stand behind it for it to work but it would not exist if he had not have made it. In the same token, (and im speaking on behalf of my belief here) I believe man is simply examining Gods magnificent and intricate creations. And as such, he has given us plenty to delight in and study.

I do not wish to use this time to give you an exhaustive list of curious hisotric evidence and colateral history (i did not say proof, hence why faith is neccesairy), but I think alot of people make the mistake of thinking that christians live in thier faith based off of 100% faith. Is faith imperative to salvation? Absolutley, and you should come to him in faith. But God does not want to see his children fooled -- otherwise what would seperate us from something such as scientology? These things are here so we may discern between truth. We are not unalike, and an interest in science does not damage your faith, so long as your faith is in the right place. In any case, im sure a scientist will gain a better understanding on this (the article) principle someday, and God will smile at the brilliance of his children.

I reccomend a book called The Field, by Lynn McTaggert. She goes through a lot of scientific research for spiritual type stuff. Most of the time though these scientists are laughed out of the community. But one man documented in chapter three developed a theory for cell communication that is very different than what has been previously accepted. That cells communicate with each other using light. Fits along quite nicely with this article.

I beleive this is an evolutionary advantage whcih confers resistance is you look back to early ribozymes the only way the could replicate if two identical RNA molecules identified each other, but amongst this was numerosu unidentical RNA molecules in the mix so they must have been a way for RNA like molecules to replicate, so i think this is something which has been selected through evolution